Night Sky from 912

How to slow.

Photo by Jackson Hendry on Unsplash

I’d like to think I’m not alone in feeling the pressure of our productivity-mad culture on my creative endeavors. Poetry—and I think I can speak for creative work more generally here—is notably grounded in the practice of slowing down to notice what’s going on inside and outside the self. Yet societal noise would have no end to the output, no rest for the wicked (nor for the attentive). For anyone tracking with me, whether you’re a writer, painter, clay-shaper, or simply just someone trying to stay human amidst the whirlwind, you know how this pressure can suck the life straight out of even good things.

Ironically, it was out of a similar reflection that my poem “Night Sky from 912” was born. Though it is an irony, it’s been a helpful touchstone to go back to when I’m feeling that pressure to produce instead of a true and pure desire to see. More to come on that later.

Nine-twelve is a prime and beautiful campsite on Sawbill Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of my favorite places on earth. The site is perched on a rocky outcropping commanding a wide southwestern view of the Lake and nearby islands; and on clear nights, a stunning view of more stars than God showed Abraham. The place demands reverence, and in return gifts a wonderful sense of smallness. There are more poems waiting to be mined in the BWCA than all the natural resources industrial giants could ever frack or plunder from the place. Here’s another I found there. Yet if I’m not careful, I could (and do) easily fall prey to that draw to production, fracking half-hearted poems from the experience instead of allowing them to come to me, or not. And with which mindset will I approach my life? It was in a decided attempt to shift toward the latter that this poem was written.

Night Sky from 912

Originally published in the Amethyst Review.

Open like the evening, heart, in wordless wonder:
     mark the whirling earth who bears
          still waters; how still
     the stars recall their dance—not
          a misstep, no mistakes—
     but every one in perfect place
          as painted
     on their velvet bed.

I rest my head below the bear, and hers—
      a stranger here— 
and ember down with our chariot star.
Let there be night, my restless soul. 
     Break open like the even.

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“Wordless wonder.” Sometimes, that should be enough. More often than not, it is. Here’s to more and more (and more) pausing amidst the chaos—the never-ending demands to produce—to really see what’s going on inside and around us. Here’s to feeling wonderfully small, and to taking more opportunities to “break open like the even” and mark our place in this wide, grand story we find ourselves a part of.